


A Question of Worth

by fallen_arazil



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protective Arthur, Rescue Missions, Woobie John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-21 18:05:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18145598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallen_arazil/pseuds/fallen_arazil
Summary: All this was to say—he was perfectly justified in sneaking out on his own to go robbing, and there was no way that he was worth enough to justify the team of three bounty hunters that descended on him.This fic is a birthday gift for the lovely and talentedoheart. Her request was, in brief "Arthur being reluctantly protective of John", so oheart, I really hope that I have gave you what you were looking for! xo.





	A Question of Worth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oheart/gifts).



> I have this tagged as John/Arthur because that is always what is behind what I write, and I always see John/Arthur in everything, but there is nothing _explicitly_ shippy going on here. Just so you know.

John wasn't Dutch, he wasn't Arthur. His bounty was … let's say, _moderate_. More than a run of the mill criminal, but nowhere near the level of lifelong gunslingers like the men he rode with. Not that a high bounty _should_ have been a point of pride, but it kind of _was_ —one Christmas, a year or two after John had joined the them, Arthur had given Dutch a framed poster of his thousand dollar bounty, behind glass and everything. It had hung on one of the posts in Dutch's tent up until the day it was destroyed in a shootout.

That had been years ago—Dutch's bounty was much higher now, and yet John's had never even reached that level. Last poster he'd seen with his crude likeness had been for three hundred dollars. Arthur was worth almost five times that.

Partly, he hadn't been in the game as long. That went without saying. Mostly, though, it was because Dutch, Hosea and Arthur wouldn't hardly let him _do_ anything. The last stagecoach they'd robbed, John had played scout. Their last bank job, John had been the lookout, hadn't even gone inside. Hell, the last house they'd robbed, just him and Arthur, Arthur had sent him to search the goddamn _barn_ , as if he was going to find gold bars in a fucking hay bale. It was _insulting_ , was what it was, because John was a better shot than all of them, and he could ride near as well as any of them, and they still treated him like the snot-nosed, half-starved twelve year old he'd been when they found him.

All this was to say—he was perfectly justified in sneaking out on his own to go robbing, and there was no way that he was worth enough to justify the team of three bounty hunters that descended on him.

He'd thought it was only one, at first. One single man on horseback, and of course John could tell he was following him—that was why he'd gone off the trail in the first place. One of the first lessons Dutch had taught him (not that John had really needed it) was that, if you really _had_ to shoot someone, try not to do it in the middle of the goddamn road. So he'd turned sharply into the tree cover, sent his horse off, and hunkered down in a dry creek bed to wait for his pursuer.

John waited so long that he started to think he'd lost his tail without even trying. When he finally heard the sound of feet shuffling though leaves, ridiculously loud in the evening's quiet, he was almost _excited_. Not to shoot a man, not for that, but to be handling this by himself. He'd got off the trail, he'd taken up a position, and now he could hear the direction he needed to aim—this was _easy_ , and when he told Dutch and Arthur, maybe they'd finally believe he could handle himself.

The minute he saw a faint silhouette come over the rise, fifty, sixty yards away, he took careful aim. The man was moving slowly, backlit by the full moon peeking through the tree cover. It was a long distance in poor lighting, but that wasn't a problem for John.

His first shot dropped the man.

The second shot came from behind him and sliced right through his flank, above his hip. John fell to the dirt and lay flat for a moment, panting with the shock of it. Just as he started to turn onto his back, to get his gun up towards the new threat, there was a weight on his back, pinning him down—another man was twisting his arms up behind his back.

"Goddamn it, Buck," the man on the rise yelled down, pulling himself up onto his hands, "the bastard shot me!"

"Sorry, Lyle," the man on John's back yelled back, laughing, "didn't reckon he'd be such a good shot!"

The third set of footsteps, approaching along the creek bed, was really just adding insult to injury. "Scrawny thing, ain't he? We sure this is the right one?"

"Three men for li'l ol' me?" John grunted, not totally able to keep the pain out of his voice. "I'm kinda flattered."

The man on John's back snorted, pulling the rope around his wrists tight enough to cut in. "Yeah," the man drawled, patting John on the shoulder like an old friend, "I'm pretty sure it's the right one."

They tossed John over the back of a horse without doing anything for the hole in his side. It bled sluggishly during the brief ride out of the woods, seeping more with every jostle, but John at least took some small pleasure in the fact that the man he shot, Lyle, seemed even worse off—John had got him in the upper chest, near the shoulder, and it looked an awful lot like he'd shattered his collarbone. He was grunting and sweating as they rode, and ultimately, he was the reason the three men decided to set up camp for the night.

"We'll bind it tight before we head out in the morning," the third man, who was apparently called Pike, was reassuring Lyle, "and head straight to the surgery once we drop off this trash.'

"I been shot before," Lyle bit out between gritted teeth, "but that's my gun arm, Pike."

"Gee, Mister, that sounds bad," John grunted out from where they'd tossed him, too far from the fire to feel any warmth. "If I was you, I'd forget all this bounty business and head straight for the Doc."

"You shut up, lest we gag you, boy," Buck said, darkly, whatever humor he'd had earlier now lost.

"I been told," John breathed out, voice wet with pain, "that shuttin' up is one'a the things I'm worst at."

They gagged him.

*

John dozed, slightly, throughout the night, the blood loss apparently making up for the acute pain. Hosea had tried, a few times, to show John how to work his way out of rope bindings, but even if John had paid attention to the lessons—he hadn't—even the slightest movement made pain shoot up through his side, and the rope was tight enough that even shifting had caused blood to run down his wrists. He'd basically resigned himself to being turned in. At least the law would probably get him a doctor, and if they left him at a city jail, odds were good that Dutch or Hosea would come to spring him.

But it wasn't Dutch or Hosea that came. It was Arthur.

He rode up on his big bay Shire just as the sun was coming up, hat shading his eyes, and he rode bold as brass right up to the campsite until the hunters stopped him, their hands on their guns while Arthur's remained on his reins.

"You looking for trouble, mister?" Pike called out, rising to his feet, and Arthur reigned in his horse, tilting his hat up with one finger, his expression a study in nonchalance.

"No trouble, friend," Arthur replied in an affable tone, "but I am wonderin' a bit why three grown men like you have a boy tied up by their fire."

"Boy!" Buck snorted, darting his eyes to John. "Mister, this here is a full-grown outlaw."

"Is he?" Arthur mused, looking right at John, catching his eyes. "Looks an awful lot like a child to me."

John bit down on the gag until he felt his teeth creak.

"Well, he ain't," Pike said shortly, "and it ain't no business of yours either way."

"I reckon it is my business if you three are out here kidnapping some poor unfortunate," Arthur said gravely, and John was a little impressed by how well he played concerned citizen, "but tell you what. You show me a bounty poster for this feller, and I'll be on my way."

"Or we could just shoot you," Buck pointed out, resting a hand lightly on the grip of his pistol.

"That'd be murder," Arthur accused, very much as if murder was something he found abhorrent. "You ready to murder a man for asking questions? Don't much sound like law-abiding types to me."

"Oh for Christ's sake," Lyle groaned from his bedroll, pained, "just show him the bounty poster, Buck."

After a beat of silent consideration, Buck nodded. He dug though his kit bag as Arthur dismounted, finally pulling out a wrinkled, sepia-toned bounty poster. Arthur reached out with his left hand to take it.

With his right, he shot Buck in the chest.

He pivoted on his heel in a second, and had a bullet through Pike's throat before the man had even drawn his pistol. Lyle, from his bedroll, began pawing desperately for his gunbelt with his left hand as Arthur sauntered over to him, as casual as you please.

Arthur whistled lowly, peering down at the poster he still held. "Did you see this, John?" he called out, even as Lyle grunted, pulling himself over towards his weapons. "You're worth four hundred dollars these days! Ain't that something. Now, you boys," and he was finally standing over Lyle; he put one booted heel on Lyle's good hand, grinding down, "you were wasting your time on this runt. Do you have any idea," Arthur asked, as he leveled his pistol at Lyle's head, "how much _I_ am worth?"

He pulled the trigger before Lyle could even attempt a response.

"Goddamn morons," Arthur muttered under his breath, swiping a hand over his face to wipe away the fine mist of blood.

John, still tied and gagged, made an insistent noise.

"Shut up, Marston, I know you're there, just hold your horses," Arthur snapped, sounding aggrieved. He proceeded to roll all three of the bodies for their valuables, before finally deigning to come over and pulling the gag out of John's mouth.

John spat, twice, into the dirt, his mouth tasting like the sweat-stained handkerchief. "Would you untie me already?" He bit out, the pain in his side causing him to gasp in breath after every second word.

"Dunno," Arthur said, crossing his arms. "You seem a lot less trouble like this. Maybe I should just throw you over Boadicea's rump for the ride back to camp."

John grunted, rubbing his sweaty forehead in the dirt. "Arthur, _please,_ they— I'm shot, they shot me—"

Arthur cursed and had John's hands free in an instant, flipping him on to his back with enough force that it made John groan. John hadn't even seen the wound himself, but he could see Arthur's face when he shoved John's shirt up his stomach, twisted in some indecipherable emotion.

"See, John, this is why we never let you do _shit_ ," Arthur accused, as he pressed his wadded-up bandana over the bullet wound, putting John's own hand on top to hold it. "Because you're out of my sight for less than a day and you manage to get yourself captured _and_ shot, Jesus _Christ_." He stood and stalked over towards Lyle's corpse—the bounty hunters' own medical kit was still open next to it.

"I'm sorry," John ground out, teeth gritted against the pain as he pressed down against the wound. "I— I didn't—"

"—think? You're goddamn right you didn't," Arthur growled in response, slamming the medical kit down next to John's hip. "We done told you— _I_ done told you—not to go out on your own 'round here. But ohhh, no, we can't tell little Johnny Marston what to do!" He pulled John's hand and his now-bloody bandana away from the wound. The alcohol he pored over it burned like fire.

"I wasn't tryin' ta—"

"Just shut your fool mouth, Marston," Arthur cut him off. "You don't got anythin' to say that I wanna hear right now." He replaced the bandana with a wad of cotton wool from the kit, rolling John onto his side to slap another against the entry wound in his back. He yanked John up to sit without much gentleness, so he could wind gauze round his stomach to hold them in place, scowling the entire time, like John's gunshot was a personal affront.

"I'm sorry," John offered again, lowly, voice and eyes both wet with pain.

"Damn it, John, don't be _sorry_ , be _better,_ " Arthur snapped back.

Maybe it was the pain, maybe it was the adrenaline of the whole capture and rescue. Maybe it was Arthur's anger, more real and hot than the casual mocking John was used to. What ever the reason, unwillingly, shamefully, John suddenly started to cry.

"Oh, Jesus," Arthur muttered, but he now sounded embarrassed rather than angry. He tucked the end of the gauze roll and, with one big arm, pulled John up against his chest, practically into his lap. "You're all right," he said under his breath, hand solid against the back of John's neck.

John hadn't been held since he was a child. Certainly not by Arthur, who most of the time treated John like a stray cat. For some reason that only made the emotions harder to tamp down, the idea that he was inflicting this on _Arthur_ , who certainly didn't want to be dealing with all of John's shit in the first place. Arthur who was everything John would never be—steady, reliable, Dutch's favored son.

"Dutch is gonna _kill_ me," John moaned, burying his face in Arthur's shirt in spite of himself.

Arthur set his chin against John's temple and sighed. "He ain't gonna kill you. I told him I sent you out to scout something for me. If anything, he's gonna take a strip off'a _me_."

John hiccoughed against Arthur's collarbone for a second, considering that. "Why … why would you do that?"

Arthur sighed again, pushing John away. "Because I know that you think I was _born_ this old and ugly, but I was nineteen once, too." He pushed himself to his feet and snagged a bottle of whiskey from beside the fire, tossing it into John's lap. "Drink that. Ride ain't gonna be real pleasant, otherwise. And John?" He waited for John to look up at him, eyes red and hands bloody. "Don't let this happen again. I ain't gonna come for you next time."

But, John realized abruptly, he _would_. He would bitch and moan, call John a fool, but he would _come_ , next time and any time after.

 


End file.
